


Deep Down

by AAKynge



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Cell Games Saga, Drama, F/M, Gen, Post-Cell Games Saga, Seven Year Gap (Dragon Ball), Three Year Gap (Dragon Ball)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26728576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AAKynge/pseuds/AAKynge
Summary: Deep Down is a story of mutual fascination and love. It attempts to document the romance and development between Bulma and Vegeta after the Cell Games and the beginning of the seven year gap. Through their story it shows us how difficult it is to change who we are. And with heartbreaking tenderness, reveals how we learn about the desire to hurt and be hurt, to love and be loved.
Relationships: Bulma Briefs & Vegeta, Bulma Briefs/Vegeta
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	1. Prologue

For the first time in months it was calm on the Capsule Corp compound, but an unsettling nervous energy lingered. The Cell Games were over, Trunks had departed to his present timeline, and Goku, much to the dismay of others, had chosen to remain in the afterlife. This was Bulma and Vegeta’s chance to create a better life together. The Androids and Cell sagas sent a loud message about how destructive Vegeta could get when he numbed his emotions. Change was overdue and it would be unwise to ignore it. It also showed them how difficult it was to change who they were.

Before the androids appeared, Vegeta and Bulma’s future looked uncertain. Orphaned from a young age and raised by Frieza led Vegeta to grow extremely detached over the years, as a defense mechanism. After the events on Namek, Vegeta was exiled to Earth. He gave up the Dragon Balls and wish for immortality. His unrelenting jealousy of Goku’s physical prowess made him obsessed with becoming a Super Saiyan - a Super Saiyan that was stronger than Kakarot. It made him lose his edge and lose his mind, going as far as neglecting Bulma and Trunks. By the time the Cell Games began, he barely spoke to them, or even looked at them. This kind of casual cruelty was excruciating for Bulma.

From the day he moved in she knew it would take a lot of effort to work through his issues, and there were no quick fixes. Through observation, she told him that the discomfort he constantly felt was grief. He was burdened with shame but didn’t acknowledge it, didn’t know how to manage it, and couldn’t find meaning in it. He had been reinforcing his negative relationship habits for a long time, rooted in his childhood when he was orphaned, forced to serve under his father’s murderer, and it only got worse. It turned him into a cruel, bloodthirsty, manipulative, narcissistic monster.

This knowledge made little difference though. It would be hard to change his life patterns. He still came to his destructive, debilitating habits because his emotional ties to them were so strong. To him, the reckless things he did were the only things he had that kept him centred and connected.

He couldn’t deny his feelings for her either. There was a deep intimacy between them. She had given him what his planet couldn’t: a sense of belonging, identity, anchoring, continuity, and predictability. But it was a huge weight on their relationship. During the three year gap, there was an evening where he sobbed unrestrainedly, knelt to her and said, 'Bulma, things might happen that won’t make sense, or that might seem wrong to you, but I need you to know that I love you, and there’s a part of me that is always thinking about you.' He rarely showed his vulnerable side. She knew he was telling the truth, and they both realised his vices were stronger than him. It was up to him to confront his vices, find his pride again, and cultivate compassion along the way.

The death of Goku and his refusal to be revived would have a lasting impact on Vegeta. In his quest to best Goku, the most important discovery he made was that Goku’s ability to love was his biggest strength, and his sacrifice left a mark in Gohan that gave him protection and renewed strength. When Gohan finally defeated Cell with the father-and-son Kamehameha, Vegeta saw with his own eyes how loving family and friends can help a person transform and grow - something he couldn't do for Trunks, who lay dead in front of him, killed by a monster he helped create.

This forced a period of deep introspection. Bulma lost her best friend, and Vegeta lost his best enemy. It made Vegeta see how shambolic his life had been: how he would have betrayed any confidence, any kindness, for the promise of being the mightiest warrior in the universe. Being in the Frieza Force and losing to Goku made him despise himself, and he just wanted to conceal the parts of himself that he found shameful. It was Bulma who showed him other things were possible. Life was different after that, maybe he never understood how different it was.

He was forced to confront a series of moral choices. It was no longer about defending who he thought he was, but committing to act for what is good and right. He began to realise that even though he was born the Prince of Saiyans and spent nearly three decades in space travel, Earth is forever his place.

(Illustrations republished with the kind permission from [Trev](https://twitter.com/IamTheTrev))


	2. Chapter 2

For over an hour Vegeta lay in a tepid bath while his blood circulation, and so it seemed, his thoughts, warmed the water. Looking out the window to the clear starry night sky, he sifted through familiar feelings and returned to certain memories again and again. Now and then, a few centimetres below the water’s surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened involuntarily as he recalled details of Bulma’s body. How she felt divine when he touched his lips to her skin; how her kiss pierced him down, so that his whole body would open up; and how when he was inside her, he seemed to fit so perfectly, nothing but obliterating, thrilling, swelling sensation.

They’ve barely spoken since returning from the Cell Games. She was still upset with him for some of the hurtful things he said to her. One night in a heated exchange he told her to 'Fuck off to your laboratory, dear. Isn’t there another time machine you need to build or some planet-saving device you need to invent? You know with your thirst for technology, you’re just like Dr. Gero. This led to his demise and might lead to yours too.'

'That’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever said to me', Bulma retorted to his insult.

He would have to speak to her soon. He stood up at last from his bath, shivering, in no doubt that great change was coming over him. He walked naked through his room. The neatly made bed, the tidily folded clothes, the room’s warmth was disablingly sensual. He stretched out on the bed, face down into his pillow and groaned. The sweetness of her, the delicacy, now in danger of becoming unreachable.

Even when he reached the front of her bedroom door his mind was not made up, and he loitered several minutes, trying to choose the less disastrous of two poor options. It came down to this: go in now and face her anger and disappointment; or go away now without a word, leaving the impression that neglecting them was what he intended, be tortured for nights and days to come, knowing nothing of her reaction. The latter would be even more unbearable, and spineless. There was no way out. He would have to speak to her.

He knocked on her door, stood back and waited. He heard gentle footsteps approaching. When Bulma opened her bedroom door they stared at each other for several seconds and neither spoke. For all his hesitation he prepared nothing to say. His only thought was that she was even more beautiful than his memories and fantasies of her. The silk nightgown she wore seemed to worship every curve of her body. The reading lamp light behind her was strong in his eyes, making it hard to read her precise expression.

Finally she said quietly, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to speak to you.’

She stepped back and opened the door wider for him to come in. He followed her to the pair of armchairs by the French doors of her balcony. Baby Trunks was fast asleep inside the crib next to her bed. Into the silence Bulma said, ‘He sleeps so deeply. I don’t want to wake him.’

He guessed that in a few minutes he would be walking back down the corridor towards his room. She could have sent him packing since he returned from the Cell Games but didn’t, and now there was a chance to apologise for his behaviour. She moved beyond the light and sunk into one of the armchairs, legs swung up with her right elbow on the armrest. Her left hand was cupped above her cheek, to exclude him from her peripheral vision. He sat down in the other armchair. A few long seconds passed. They looked at each other and then looked away. They had grown apart during the Androids and Cell sagas, how artificial their physical closeness seemed now.

He had been absent for so long he struggled to find the courage to step back in and reach for the larger thought: _I love you. You gave me life_. She was facing him now, shoulders lowered with both hands on her knees, shrinking into the armchair. She took a deep breath as if about to speak, but said nothing. It was only then it occurred to him that she might not be withdrawing herself from him, but pulling him with her deeper into her gloom. 

From the moment he returned to Capsule Corp he had nothing to lose, so he took her hand and squeezed. The gesture carried all that had not been said. She answered it with pressure from her own hand. They did not let go. 

He spoke slowly, ‘Bulma, you asked me once if you could be of help. And I, so proud and confident of my great powers replied, no. But since that day so much has changed...’

Finally he said the one thing he had never said to her before. ‘I’m sorry.’

It sounded foolish and inadequate, as though he had forgotten her birthday. She was looking at him, shaking her head gently. She drew a deep breath and said reflectively, ‘No, Vegeta. You don’t owe me anything.’

‘To the contrary Bulma, I owe you everything. You’re too generous to give up on me. You’ve made a new life possible for me here. You gave me everything my home planet couldn’t and more. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.’

It’s true, she thinks. He wouldn’t be. He would be somewhere else entirely, living a different kind of life. And Bulma herself would be another person completely. She might still be with Yamcha, and her aspirations for love would be different.

‘I feel guilty for all the stuff I did, and didn’t do, to you and Trunks.’ Vegeta added. ‘Obviously a lot of it was in my head. Not that I am justifying what I did. I was terrified of falling in love with you, as if being ripped to pieces by the enormous gravity of a black hole. And then I threw you into it. I still think about it a lot, why I acted in such an abysmal way.’

He was squeezing her hand so tightly now it almost hurt her. This small gesture of desperation on his part made her smile. 

‘I forgive you,’ she said.

‘Thank you. I think I did learn from everything that’s happened since we met. I sense a change in me, as a person, and if I do, it’s because of you.’

They kept holding hands, and then he touched his lips to her skin. She felt holy, like a shrine. He continued to kiss her lightly, and they drew closer. When their tongues touched, his heart and soul were abjectly grateful, for he knew he now it was always there, that he was not lost to the darkness forever. They tightened their embrace and went on kissing. She was crying onto his cheek, and her sorrow stretched her lips against his. She was letting it all out, all her feelings of abandonment and loneliness left her.

From a young age his life has been abnormal, as was hers. They both know that. But so much is covered over in time, like the way leaves fall over and cover the earth, and eventually decay into the soil. The terrible things that he did are buried in the earth of his body. Under her influence, he tries to be a good person. But deep down he knows he is a bad person, corrupted, wrong. And all his efforts to be right only disguise what is buried inside him, the evil part of himself. She sees how and why he feels himself unlovable, and where that fatal flaw might lead. He would betray her seven years later, a necessary, wrenching process of breaking down the person he was in order to become the person he was destined to be. 

Over the past three years they’ve been like two little plants sharing the same pot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions, and bearing fruit. She has done something for him. She made a new life possible, and she can always feel good about it. She brought him goodness like a gift and now it belongs to him. For now, their lives together open up before them in all directions. She has done a lot of good for him. Really, people can really change one another.

‘Come back... Vegeta, come back to me.’ Bulma said gently.

‘I always come home to you. You know that.’

(Illustration republished with the kind permission from [Mandy Switzer](https://twitter.com/itsmandymo))


End file.
